Five People Choosing a Plan

How do you make a silk purse out of a sows ear? I have been attempting just that these last few weeks. Our ministry has an old Victorian-style house that is too solid and historical to tear down. We have come up with the idea of tearing out the back wall and making it into an open-air wedding barn venue. Whew…that was a “mouth full” description. It has fallen upon me to make it happen. Leg work type stuff, like drawing the blueprint, and talking to the city with the object of meeting city codes. But first, all five Directors must come to agreement about what it should look like when it is done, and that is no small feat when it comes to three opinionated people, one who is missing from meetings, and one who will agree with anyone is is speaking the loudest. I started off with a plan. That got shot down. I drew up another plan, and the city told me I needed to get an engineer to see if it would work. That took several days.

I drew up another plan that two of us liked. It had to do with a surface where women’s high heel shoes wouldn’t get stuck in gravel or the dirt. Two men said that approach would kill the ambience (they don’t wear heels that I know of). At this point I thought they were going to kill me with frustration. I joined the enemy’s camp and told the woman I had sold out, and listed the reasons why, most of which had to do with equipment and manpower the men were going to furnish. So, now its back to another plan and blueprint for the city.

In the meantime, I have helped tear down an old house close to the one we are renovating. We saved some lumber out of it. Beaded ceiling and 1 x 12’s. I priced used lumber at a local store and was shocked to learn it is selling for from .80 to 1.25 a linear foot. Wow! I’ve saved yards and yards of linear feet…a whole pile of it. There will be enough to almost finish the house in the shabby-chic style. That is if we can stay in agreement as to the design. I’m in agreement with what one man said as the three of us met. “We’re the ones doing all the work, so we should get to have the say in what we do!”